Mark Singleton Responds to Critics Who Didn’t Want to Understand His Book

Mark Singleton Responds to Critics Who Didn’t Want to Understand His Book

An earlier version of this article first appeared in Yoga International.

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The 2010 publication of Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice, marked a watershed moment in the history of global asana culture.

What was the big deal? A writer equally committed to research and practice produced a work of academic scholarship so rich, accessible, and interesting it quickly broke into the non-academic reading lists of enthusiastic practitioners and top-shelf trainings in the English-speaking world.

Mark Singleton’s book sparked countless conversations about the meaning of social authenticity in a practice meant to reveal personal authenticity. It revolutionized the genetic view of yogic transmission – in which instructions are handed down unchanged across generations and postcolonial boundaries – with epigenetic considerations of cultural, historical, and technological influence.

It showed that yoga is not an artifact, but an organism, and that its teachers may be less guardians of the essential than they are curators of the useful. Continue reading “Mark Singleton Responds to Critics Who Didn’t Want to Understand His Book”